


Exquisite

by themysteryvanishing



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sparktober, Episode: s03e06 The Real World, F/M, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27248137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themysteryvanishing/pseuds/themysteryvanishing
Summary: I have zero confidence when it comes to writing these two, but I adore Elizabeth Weir with my entire soul. I had to try! This is part of an ongoing prompt challenge with my writing buddy Akoya8, and only shared because racethewind_10 asked so nicely.
Relationships: John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Exquisite

**Author's Note:**

> I have zero confidence when it comes to writing these two, but I adore Elizabeth Weir with my entire soul. I had to try! This is part of an ongoing prompt challenge with my writing buddy Akoya8, and only shared because racethewind_10 asked so nicely.

Elizabeth wouldn’t dare admit to John, to Dr. Beckett, to any of her family in this strange city, how many nights she’d spent in her office playing solitaire in order to avoid going to sleep. The miserable joke that solitaire was her game of choice was not lost on her.

Beyond the glass walls of her office, the night watch quietly paced the control tower while the gate slumbered, inactive. Light from the planet’s two visible moons poured through a window in her office, spilling across her desk.

It had been a week since the coma. Reality still didn’t mean the same thing to her as it did before. Misgivings had begun to take root, and doubt was a luxury she could never afford. Not in Atlantis. Never here.

In the moonlit quiet of her office, once the city had gone to sleep, she’d begun driving nails into her arms, desperate to ground herself after spending her days floating, unbalanced. She had made a poor job of hiding the damage though, purpling evidence of her own mistrust peeking out under a sleeve during a team meeting last Thursday. When John had caught her wrist post-meeting, a gentle gesture he did from time to time whenever he suspected she was mired in misery—bureaucratic or otherwise—she had recoiled in pain. It was not his discovery of it that filled her with shame, but the fact that she had never seen such exquisite sadness in this man’s eyes.

It was John who had suggested the letters.

On some level, she suspected he understood what it meant, to have doubt occupy the place in one’s heart where confidence used to be. He’d had enough bizarre encounters in this unfamiliar galaxy that, of her entire team, he might come closest to understanding the cost of losing trust in oneself.

He’d asked his team to write letters to her, physical talismans she could refer to whenever her mind began to drift.

Elizabeth eyed a stack of memos on her desk, rubbing her arm absentmindedly. She needed to feel the floor beneath her feet again.

Flicking through the papers, a small handwritten note caught her attention, and her heart began to pound.

“They say regrets weigh a little heavier on the heart over time.

But you…you made me realize that I don’t want to reach the end buried under all the what ifs and why nots. You showed me it’s not worth my sanity, not worth my heart.

Because of you, I’ve widened my gaze. You showed me the edge, showed me that just beyond the periphery is a weird, wonderful, and unpredictable world. A world of which I was always a part, but not one in which I felt I belonged. I feel like I should thank you for that, for showing me that there are two sides to every story. You showed me that people are full of surprises and, while I can’t foresee them all, they are a necessary part of life.

You taught me spend less time regretting and more time accepting. You taught me to trust. Thank you, Elizabeth.

-John”


End file.
